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17-07-2019, 02:38 PM
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Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla...lands-48989211



Dozens of discarded banana skins are being found littered across Ben Nevis. The peelings, left by some of the 160,000 visitors to Britain's highest mountain, can take as long as two years to degrade.

A litter pick over two days last week by a member of mountain clean-up campaign the Real3Peaks Challenge collected 8kg of banana skins. In September 2009, the landscape conservation charity removed 1,000 banana skins from the summit during a clean-up of litter.

The Real3Peaks Challenge, which also organises litter picks on other Scottish mountains and Scafell Pike in England and Snowdon in Wales, has taken away as much as 230kg of rubbish from Ben Nevis in a previous litter pick. Last year, the amount was down to 135kg but most of it was banana and other fruit peelings as well as tissues.

How long does litter take to degrade?
  • Banana skins/orange peels - two years
  • Cigarette butts - 12 years
  • Plastic carrier bags - 10 to 1,000 years
  • Plastic bottles - 500 years
  • Crisp packets - 80 years
  • Tissues - A month
Patently, some visitors are still either ignorant of the countryside code (care of the environment) or prefer to ignore it .....
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18-07-2019, 05:52 AM
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Re: Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

I certainly didn't know about banana skins banana they degrade in my kitchen in about one week so it must be the cold on Ben Nevis that keeps them from rotting down .
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18-07-2019, 06:29 AM
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Re: Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

I find it disgusting that walkers should have to be told not to drop litter. As children it was instilled in us that we brought our litter home and disposed of it properly.
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18-07-2019, 06:52 AM
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Re: Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

I expect that they think banana skins are bio degradable .
However this is a problem faced by all mountains .
I mean Everest is littered with junk including dead bodies .
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20-07-2019, 03:33 AM
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Re: Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

Originally Posted by Muddy ->
I expect that they think banana skins are bio degradable .
However this is a problem faced by all mountains .
I mean Everest is littered with junk including dead bodies .
I shouldn't have laughed, but I did. There was something so morbidly funny about comparing dead bodies on Everest to banana peels.

I know. Bad, bad me.
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20-07-2019, 06:13 PM
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Re: Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

Originally Posted by Muddy ->
I expect that they think banana skins are bio degradable .
However this is a problem faced by all mountains .
I mean Everest is littered with junk including dead bodies .
..... and poo:

https://www.foxnews.com/world/mount-...-official-says

Mount Everest has become an ‘open toilet.'

The current "biggest" threat to climbers on the world's tallest peak, the former head of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said, is the staggering amount of human excrement being left on its slopes -- with some estimates putting that number at more than 17,000 pounds for this season alone. Hundreds of people are there for weeks and go to open toilets.

Melting conditions at Camp 2 create an odor that is sickening to climbers, and the waste will eventually contaminate water sources below and become a health hazard.

Some climbers use biodegradable bags that have enzymes, which decompose human waste but most of them don’t.

Instead of using the makeshift toilets, many climbers dig a hole in the snow, letting the waste fall into small crevasses. However, rising temperatures have thinned the glacier, leaving fewer and smaller crevasses. The overflowing waste then spills downhill toward Base Camp and even communities below the mountain.
Frankly, that's absolutely irresponsible and disgusting - IMO, it amounts to the desecration of what is, to some, a holy place ..... : mad2:

Ben Nevis doesn't have that problem ..... yet .....
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20-07-2019, 07:53 PM
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Re: Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

This does not surprise me I mean where people 'go' is always a mystery to non mountain climbers .
When they hang on ledges for example.
questions one does not like to ask
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20-07-2019, 09:38 PM
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Re: Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

I was always led to believe that such things as apple cores (and presumably banana skins, though we didn't have any when I was a kid) could be thrown away almost anywhere on land because they just rot away.

What has suddenly changed?

I'm not suggesting that it's OK to create great piles of waste vegetable matter, but it's not as if a few banana skins can be compared to illegal fly tipping.
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20-07-2019, 11:09 PM
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Re: Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

A banana skin will rot away nicely in a week or so in your compost heap in your garden.
But at a high altitude it can take years...multiply that by thousands and you get the picture?
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21-07-2019, 12:51 AM
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Re: Ben Nevis walkers told not to drop banana skins

Originally Posted by JBR ->
I'm not suggesting that it's OK to create great piles of waste vegetable matter, but it's not as if a few banana skins can be compared to illegal fly tipping.
It's not a few banana skins - it's hundreds on Ben Nevis, thousands if they weren't collected by volunteers ..... and it's not just Ben Nevis, it's every every mountain, every hillside now visited by increasing numbers of "tourists" - 160,000 ascended Ben Nevis, 600,000 visited Snowdon's peak last year .....
 
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